Japan's disastrous campaign in China

[MP.001]

Here some screenshot from my last Japan's attempt to attack China. To underline that I am giving priority to land army/tech for what concerns decisions and tech.
All divisions are involved in the area and are all trained at least at level 3 (maybe a couple of garrisons are at level 2). Apart the focus to attack China, I have a bit navigated the Manchu national focus tree.

Unfortunately I have overwritten the old autosave, but also this game is interesting. So, here the situation.
1-2. China start to attack you immediately and is going to keep pressure in the North

3. I create a second front near Qingdao. Some landing are not executed and thse with no division assigned have to be only deleted. Anyway, the second front is opened.

4. But, the front is immediately halted and China soon gain numeric advantage.

5-6. The third front is created near Ningbo. But, also on the third front, immediately China divisions stop the attack. It is realy interesting the 50% negative bonus for the attack to China... anyway, 2 tank and 4 infantry divisions are not able to go anywhere.

7. After one month, in the north China is still attacking and Japan's organization is going down.

8. Center front is stalled. An attack from different fronts and with the same amount of divisions... is not going anywhere.

9. Same for the South front. Stalled attack.

10. An attempt to land in Hainan is going no where (but at least this I consider normal. 3 divisions against 1 in landing I do not expect to be succesfull)

11. After 3 months, North front, China is still attacking and Japan's divisions are taking damages.

12. Center: totally stalled.

13. South: totally stalled.

My army is in China, but no way to advance. I could create new fronts with divisions that are going to be created, but it is not going to change the direction of the war.

 

[CraniumMuppet]

I mean I'm not sure what you are asking for but have you escalated the war in China to remove the Marco Polo spirit? It looks like your values are low

Also try and get Air superiority

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

As others have responded to in the other threads where you have commented ... you own HoI4, but are disappointed in it isn't like HoI II. And as the above shows, instead of learning how to do better in HoI4, you try and show that HoI4 has bad design decisions.

Spend the time to learn how to get better in HoI4 or not. Your choice.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

your templates are mismatched widths, you're attacking with horrible numerical inferiority in many cases, you don't have air superiority, you likely didn't do the marco polo incident, and your templates seem horrible. base soft attack in the 30s is not going to push anything.

 

[MP.001]

As others have responded to in the other threads where you have commented ... you own HoI4, but are disappointed in it isn't like HoI II. And as the above shows, instead of learning how to do better in HoI4, you try and show that HoI4 has bad design decisions.

Spend the time to learn how to get better in HoI4 or not. Your choice.

The idea that my ideas could be used to improve HoI IV no? Could you stop trolling?

 

[MP.001]

I mean I'm not sure what you are asking for but have you escalated the war in China to remove the Marco Polo spirit? It looks like your values are low

Also try and get Air superiority

I have escalated two timest, still having 30% unanderstandable penalty. And, to fully remove Marco Polo's spirit, you need a war score of 30%. I was at 4% after that two invasions. Just to reply other in other topics, I had my ful aviation in the north, but China was taking air superiority from USSR support. If you need I can take other screenshots.

 

[MP.001]

Some updates continuing this last game:
14: difficult defense on the south front. You can see Chinese statistics are even better mine.

15: With a not expcted success, the land near Shangai has opened the root to Nanjing. I was not expecting being able to take it, but my motorized division is arrived soon to the unprotected city, taking it. Now, troops have created a belt around it, but lines are stretched and may fall. Having taken these lands, war score is around 24% so still far from removing Marco Polo's spirit. Attacks, despite having escalated two times, are still heavily penalized and Chinese statistics are still better then mine.
Near Nanjing I have air superiority.

 

[Aubrey]

Err, I’m pretty sure you don’t know what “trolling” means.

Just because a few folks — well, everyone actually — is telling you that you are wrong, does not make them trolls.

If everyone says you are wrong, maybe you are ... you know ... freaking WRONG.

 

[King Of Heroes]

Could you submit your savegame to us for analysis? They should be in your "(Username)\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\save games" folder

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

The idea that my ideas could be used to improve HoI IV no?

Your "ideas" are not coming across as suggestions. But if that is your intent, they are welcome.

 

[AxeBeard]

its 1937, why even be concerned?

 

[MP.001]

Could you submit your savegame to us for analysis? They should be in your "(Username)\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\save games" folder

Sure I can. But I can send it to official paradox accounts. Not sure why I should sent it to anyone.

 

[MP.001]

16. It has told me I was not using air. It is not the issue, the issue is coming from Soviet involvement in statistics. Here we are. To be noticed, this is not my full air stack, now there are units in the south, but before my air was spent in this region... I still I was not able to get air superiority.

17. A lot of... experts... have told me "you are using bad templates"... they are the starting templates, that's it. At the start I was neither able to potentiate them, missing related points, but even now... I can just operate some little adjustements. Infantry equipment is always severely negative, and even after few changes (adding support artillery and a second couple of tanks to that sort of armoured division), here the result: a disastrous industrial situation

18. at the end, Chinese counteroffensive to take back Nanjing

I have managed to stop it... but I had to force the deploy of 4 infantry divisions (sent in a rush to the front), and I started an attack in the north to keep them busy (obviously, another pathetic attack, but that's it...):

 

[King Of Heroes]

Sure I can. But I can send it to official paradox accounts. Not sure why I should sent it to anyone.

Attach it to this thread so we can tell exactly what you're doing wrong, there's no point in being stubborn about it.

 

[goodcigar]

One of the major problems with the war in China is the fact that the Soviet Union is allowed to send literally up to 16 or so Divisions (including Tank Divisions) to aid the Chinese factions. Which is completely historically wrong and absolutely ridiculous in every sense. Should absolutely not be happening on Historical Mode. Really unfortunate this issue hasn't been fixed still. The Soviet Union did aid the Republic of China government for a few years but it never consisted of ground troops.

Sino-Soviet relations - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Soviet Volunteer Group - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

@CraniumMuppet @podcat @Arheo

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IIRC when I did this for Japan achievements I just used starting division templates and spammed a bit extra infantry (hard to remember the specifics now):



Either abuse cap surround trick to kill their supply, or concentrate your better divisions and do breakthroughs/encirclements to destroy their divisions (and thus equipment) repeatedly until they thin out. Regardless of approach good micro should let you beat China sooner and more soundly than was attainable in history.

 

[George Parr]

Why exactly would you add stuff to your templates which you don't have?

Of course you will fail if you add tanks, artillery and support equipment to your division templates while not having any of those in sufficient numbers to use them. Having something in your template only makes sense if you actually have the equipment to fill up the divisions that use it.

There is also no reason at all why you should have such a large lack of infantry equipment. Either you didn't put nearly enough effort into producing it, or you build way too many divisions, or you somehow wasted a colossal amount of equipment on wasteful frontal attacks for a very long time.

Now, I might disagree with quite a few of the design-decisions made by the developers, but most of the "issues" you run into here are not the game being "bad", but you not doing things properly. On an even averagely played game as Japan, you don't run into any issues with equipment in the war against China, nor is China itself much of a problem. That is even more true when it comes to Germany and Poland. You don't even need to do much at all to make the latter a walk in the park, while the former mostly requires some naval landings and a vague sense of when to push and when to hold and letting the enemy waste its resources while you just hold the line with some defenders and remove the rest of your units for an attempt elsewhere.

If I, who isn't even particularly interested in playing perfectly, can easily win as Japan, or even bring Japan the victory by controlling just the three volunteer divisions I send as Germany, then there isn't much of a reason to assume that this is somehow a difficult war to win.

 

[jacekgk]

There is also no reason at all why you should have such a large lack of infantry equipment. Either you didn't put nearly enough effort into producing it, or you build way too many divisions, or you somehow wasted a colossal amount of equipment on wasteful frontal attacks for a very long time.

Exactly - usually, I don't care about lack of equipment, but if I decided to major war very quickly, I want to have as many full strenght division, as I can and reasonable stockpile.

MP.001, I think, You have two options in japanese - chinese war:

1. First, more attractive for me - don't play historically! For example, You can join Axis and beat Allies first. This is very good strategy, because if You delay war with China, You can get more equipment, more strenght, and very, very OP event: Chinese provocation, which gives You war goal against China without this nasty penalty. I think, that this method allowed me to defeat the Chinese in less than six months.

2. Second, if You play historically - try to use starting armor divisions to circle as many chinese division, as You can. Lot of japanese troops can fight against China on the border, armor divisions and some other troops can landing near of Qingdao. There are some YT tutorials, how to do it. I pretty sure, that I saw one of them, when there no more than 10 chinese divisions left and all of soviets troops were gone

No matter, what You choose, remember, that Japan has very, very powerful national focuses, which gives You probably the fastest war economy in the entire game. Judging by the condition of the warehouse, You haven't used it yet.

 

[spartansociety]

Why exactly would you add stuff to your templates which you don't have?

He was trying to roleplay late war Germany.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

16. It has told me I was not using air. It is not the issue, the issue is coming from Soviet involvement in statistics. Here we are. To be noticed, this is not my full air stack, now there are units in the south, but before my air was spent in this region... I still I was not able to get air superiority.

The issue is you not using even half of your airforce there, not building up airfield in East Hebei (to get the planes you do use some decent efficiency), and (optionally) not using those carriers as a mobile base for carrier CAS.